


and i'll keep singing this lie

by sunsetveins



Series: unfinished works [2]
Category: All Time Low, Fall Out Boy, My Chemical Romance, Panic! at the Disco
Genre: Multi, Road Trips, This Isn't Complete, in the slightest, it barely begins really
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-07
Updated: 2016-11-07
Packaged: 2018-08-29 13:59:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,170
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8492437
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunsetveins/pseuds/sunsetveins
Summary: She meets him at a random bar somewhere in the middle of Texas.or, the one where chance meetings don't always end in falling in love





	

**Author's Note:**

> Not complete, but I hope you're alright with what's here.

She meets him at a random bar somewhere in the middle of Texas. It's her 21st birthday and she doesn't have many friends so she left her empty home at midnight the night before and took off for a destination unknown. She found herself here. 

He's drunk off his ass and is stripping on top of the bar. No one seems to care except for the grumpy middle aged man at the main end that looks like he's either seen death itself or the death of something endlessly important. He would never say anything, she knows. People like that know too much grief to judge a drunk man trying to strip away his brain. 

Still, she taps his stomach and looks up into the red rimmed eyes, swimming with hazy broken things and too much vodka. 

Somehow, she gets him to come with her. It's obvious he won't remember a thing the next day and will ask all the same questions she's already giving him answers to, but she still lists her name and where she's taking him. It's not every day that she takes home drunk strangers, but she thinks it's some kind of protocol to make sure they've at least been told where they're being taken.

She's staying at a hotel about a block away. She had a drink or two herself, newly 21 and all, so she walks them both the block and staggers up the steps and into her room with the shirtless man.

It takes maybe an hour to get him to go to sleep and by that time she passes out herself.

She's not certain, but she's thinking she made a good call. Whatever it may have been.

 

-

 

"Who are you?" 

10 AM has never hurt this much. She blinks and offers him a hand.

"Kaitlyn Way, at your service. You are?" 

He has brown eyes, this she can now see very clearly without all the red and vodka obscuring them. They're deep and rich and she thinks maybe it'd be possible to drown in them if you were to stare long enough. 

He'd make a great hypnotist, maybe. Brown eyes are kind of entrancing in a way that no other color can quite merit aside from the startling bright icy blue that she's only come in contact with once. 

He stares with those big brown eyes, his pupils dilating and his fingers twitching in his lap. The scruff of his face makes the clench of his jaw hard to notice, but she's too focused on his features to miss it.

He's a pretty stranger, she'll give him that.

"Jack," he relents, "Jack Barakat." 

His fingers stop twitching and he grasps her hand in his, flexing his grip and staring like he trusts her. Like this means he's taken a chance.

She doesn't know him, so maybe he has.

"Well then, Jack Barakat," she smiles as brightly as she possibly can, "you can call me Katie since we aren't strangers anymore."

"Katie," he says like he's testing the name on his tongue. "Katie. I like it."

"Good. Coffee?" 

10 AM tastes like headaches and Jack's name mixed with too much sugar in shitty insta-coffee. She doesn't even hope to change it.

 

-

 

"Are you running?" Jack asks. It's 6 PM.

"No. Are you?" 

Silence doesn't sound so loud when you have someone to share it with.

"Maybe," he answers finally. 

"Running," she says, "means having something to run from. I'm not running because I have nothing to be running from. I just simply left. I'm not running because I'm leaving. That's to say if it doesn't mean all the same, because in that case I haven't really left anything either. Just emptiness. But that's the question. Do you have anything to be running from, Jack Barakat?"

"Yeah," there wasn't even a second of hesitation, "I do."

"Then," they're sitting side by side, feet swinging off of the balcony ledge with their hands wrapped tight around the bars, "may I aid you in running, Jack Barakat?"

The sky is kind of a pinkish blue and the heat has settled warm. There's miles and miles of nothing stretching as far as either of them can see. Jack's lips stretch into a small smile, barely an ant in the endless amounts of green, and he whispers, "You may, Kaitlyn Way."

It's the start of something. They just don't know what yet.

 

-

 

"You have a brother?"

"Two."

"Where are they?"

She looks sad, the green of her eyes haunted by the shadow of hazel in the middle, "I don't know."

"I have a sister."

"She have a name?"

"Do your brothers?"

"They did."

"So did she."

 

-

 

They leave Texas in two days’ time. They're in Nevada in that time doubled. Vegas, to be exact.

The hotel is hotter than the air outside and the TV doesn't really work all that well but there's free Wi-Fi and a bar downstairs with free performances at 8 to 4. There's a buffet open 24/7 too, so it's counted as a win.

They stay for half a month and they don't plan to leave even then until one night she comes back with red rimmed eyes and a new kind of aged experience about her that just doesn't sit right with Jack. All she'll say is “brown eyes and a voice to rival the angels she'll never meet” and that's all Jack really needs to put the puzzle halfway together and have the other half nearly complete.

It's Utah then and Montana the next week. North Dakota isn't as exciting as Nevada, but Iowa provides some sort of tranquility that eases both of their minds.

They move each week until it's been three months and they find themselves in Chicago, Illinois. People in Chicago aren't as rude as the people in New York, but they aren't as nice as the people in Indiana either. They're a mixture and it's a blend that makes them both want to stay for a while.

So, they rent an apartment and stay for two months. The two-month point is when they meet Pete Wentz. 

Pete is sporadic and tastes like charred bacon mixed with some kind of buttery warmth. He wears the oddest things and he re-does his eyeliner ten times an hour. His eyes have this whiskey kind of allure to them and his lips, oh fuck his lips, they make ice cream seem as rough and tough as a well-cooked steak. 

He's kind of an asshole but he's so not at the same exact time. He's hard to understand and it seems like he's always speaking in riddles that are hidden somewhere on the surface of his tongue and hanging off the bottom of his ill-timed jokes. There's something in his movements that just isn’t quite right and there seems like there are secrets buried underneath his skin, seeping into his veins the longer they stay there unspoken.

Pete Wentz is odd and Katie enjoys every second of not knowing a thing about him.


End file.
